The Lurker

During the production of a play at a high school in the Chicago area, theater students and members of the faculty are preyed upon by a mysterious lurker in a bird's beak plague mask.

"The Lurker" (2019) was described by producers as "an ode to 80's slashers," which is true, but it has more in common with "Scream" from the mid-90s, walking the balance beam between serious slasher and semi-parody. Remember Henry Winkler's weird principal? You'll get the same curiously hammy performances with the drama club teacher and the father at the party house. You also get the unnecessarily mean-spirited characters with a few exceptions, like the interesting long-haired janitor.

Scout is, of course, a highlight as the protagonist. She was soon-to-turn 30 during shooting and barely acceptable as a 17-18 years-old student, but this isn't exactly uncommon in filmmaking seeing as how Roddy McDowall played a high school student when he was 36 in "Lord, Love a Duck." Petite Kali Skatchke is another standout in the feminine department as Emma. There are a couple of other notables, but the director unfortunately didn't know how to shoot women (no pun intended) in the manner of, say, the original "Friday the 13th" or "Slumber Party Massacre II."

The story is a whodunnit and the revelation at the end is good; proficient writing on that front. The gore's well-done as well, for those who care. Unfortunately, there are some technical issues, like questionable dubbing and editing, which offers a kind of off-kilter viewing experience and smacks of inept or low-rent filmmaking.

Despite my criticisms, it's entertaining enough to make it worth checking out for fans of the genre.

The movie is short 'n' sweet at 1 hour, 14 minutes. It was shot in Chicago.

GRADE: C-/C.

I like Scout Taylor-Compton I think she is a good actress but I mean she is quite clearly not young enough to play a high school student and doesnt even look close, to the point where it's impossible to look past that and actually even try review any other part of this movie, I cant believe she would even agree to the part.

It justs bad beyond belief and for that it deserves nothing more than 1 star.

This movie does not even deserve a review, because it's on the level of a high school project, where all of the "actors" and "actresses" were cast off the street and randomly given roles, some of them deciding to ham it up like an absurd comedy. The lead actress looks to be the age of the mother of the classmates, there's an entire generation gap between her and the rest of the students. The acting is tone deaf, amateurish, emotionally devoid, and on the verge of character breaking. Scenes just suddenly lurch forward with every cut, with no regard to tone, setting, or logic. The dialogue is either banal, on the nose, pointless, or senseless (in the case where the lead refers to a clearly normal human killer as "something") To top it off, the audio is quickly slapped together, with several places where ambient audio is simply missing, as characters are speaking with no sound, sentences are cut off between scenes a couple times, some voices are omnipresent, while sometimes a person's voice audio will be louder than the others. It's movies like these that IMDB should have a 0 rating, because this isn't a legitimate feature film, it's a group project where even the people involved will be embarrassed to see again.

Lets be real here , the acting was rubbish , including Taylor - Compton , most of the cast wouldn't even be suited to act as extras in a zombie movie. Secondly who wrote this movie , it was ok ish until the part where they went to the party at Romeo house , the writing just went down hill from there , I mean seriously who leaves the safety of all there friends in the living room to go snooping through the house of the boy she hates . And who decides to split up in the woods at night on a stupid treasure hunt . Its like whoever produced this movie did everything in there power to make sure it sucked . I gave it 3 stars because the story itself was ok ish.

Following the death of a faculty member, the students of a local high school play decide to carry on in their honor, but when the lead actress becomes convinced that she's in danger for a cruel prank she and her friends pulled years earlier they find the performance targeted by a masked killer out for revenge.

On the whole, this was a disappointing slasher. One of the better aspects here is the rather fun setup and layout of the school's performances that are shown here. The performances pieces are quite high-end for a high-school quality production, especially the opening which goes alongside the fine stalking of the victim throughout the school as it's ongoing. Likewise, the latter part of the film where it goes away from the school to a series of enjoyable stalking at the house part gets another fun addition of some brutal kills to the mix with bashings by a bat, drowning in a sink and numerous grisly impalements which is all that is likable here, unfortunately. There are some big problems on display. Among the biggest drawbacks is an utterly bland, cliche and unimpressive high-school drama setup that takes place at the school. The entire setup about the backstabbing and jealousy that arises when dealing with the club-members, from secretly trying to sabotage the other actors to get their turn in the spotlight or the clique of mean girls trying to get through the year together with a secret intact, are nowhere near interesting at all and are just absolute cliches that have no point in being included here. All their inclusion seems to offer up is eye-rolling and boredom throughout the first half here with the inclusion of these insipid and useless elements present. The other problem is the terrible and completely out-of-left-field finale that undermines what happened beforehand here. The true revelation of the killer makes no sense as there's nothing about their intentions mentioned as a motivation for getting involved that requires them to engage in this slaughter as all of it just comes off as stupid. That reveal also changes around a leads' likability by switching around their entire setup to have it make sense, and the entire outcome in the hospital makes no sense either if the entire point is undermined by performing what happens in full view of everyone. It's not shocking, intriguing and just makes this more of a mess than it should.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.